Any loss that’s allowable in a particular year reduces your at-risk investment (but not below zero) as of the beginning of the next tax year and in all succeeding tax years for that activity. If you have a loss that’s more than your at-risk amount, the loss disallowed won’t be allowed in later years unless you increase your at-risk amount. Losses that are suspended because they’re greater than your investment that’s at risk are treated as a deduction for the activity in the following year. Consequently, if your amount at risk increases in later years, you may deduct previously suspended losses to the extent that the increases in your amount at risk exceed your losses in later years. However, your deduction of suspended losses may be limited by the passive loss rules.

One customer says – “Of course then you still have to work at marketing an ebook. “.Most buyers quickly discovered that the passive income is worth watching plus provides basic educates on avoiding excessive spending and creating income streams. Many have used the passive income for more than few months without letup, and it shows no sign of giving up.

This KB article is an excerpt from our book which is available in paperback from Amazon, as an eBook for Kindle and as a PDF from ClickBank. We used to publish with iTunes and Nook, but keeping up with two different formats was brutal. You can cruise through these KB articles, click on the fancy buttons below or visit our webpage which provides more information at-
If you have any questions or you can’t decide how best to invest your assets, consider talking to a financial advisor. A matching tool like SmartAsset’s SmartAdvisor can help you find a person to work with to meet your needs. First you’ll answer a series of questions about your situation and goals. Then the program will narrow down your options from thousands of advisors to up to three registered investment advisors who suit your needs. You can then read their profiles to learn more about them, interview them on the phone or in person and choose who to work with in the future. This allows you to find a good fit while the program does much of the hard work for you.
Let’s say I am a parttime real estate investor with buy and hold rentals. I have a normal W-2 job but decided for educational purposes to take/pass the state real estate licensing exam. Now if I have an opportunity and want to work on nights/weekends as a real estate agent, does my passive rental income now get taxed (and much higher) as active income? Or does this come down to whether I work +\- 500 hours as an agent?

Investing in real estate has been around for ages. Whether you are looking to buy your first duplex or getting into a large commercial property, rental properties can provide passive income through rents with some very appealing tax benefits. This method can be harder to get started with given the initial capital needed in most cases, but is certainly a great way to generate passive income.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “I wish there was a product that did this,” then invent it! Create a product, medical or otherwise, and sell it as a company or get royalties for it. It’s not impossible to figure out, I have many friends who have taken a concept to market. Don’t overlook an invention as a fantastic means of attaining passive income.
You’ll also want to include some sort of “Rate Me” system. This is where after the user has used your app, you give them a popup to rate your app. This allows your app to generate more ratings and reviews which help with the app store algorithm (ASO) ranking. Another popular tactic is to funnel positive feedback to your ratings and negative feedback to emailing you directly. Not only does this improve your overall rating, but it gives you quicker and more direct feedback from emails. Allowing you to respond to them instantly and help them resolve their issues.
When a taxpayer records a loss on a passive activity, only passive activity profits can have their deductions offset instead of the income as a whole. It would be considered prudent for a person to ensure all the passive activities were classified that way so they can make the most of the tax deduction. These deductions are allocated for the next tax year and are applied in a reasonable manner that takes into account the next year's earnings or losses.
Great post. Fortunately I learned pretty early on that our whole tax system is set up to provide greater advantages to those earning passive income. Meanwhile, the majority of the workers in the country continue to trade their precious time for a paycheck, and then get screwed through additional taxation on that money. I’m still working a 9-5, but my passive income grows with every month and I’m always looking to build more streams of passive income. You never know when one of those little streams will turn into a raging river and start really providing massive amounts of cash!
Real estate investments generally are considered passive income – unlike income from a job, which is considered active – because revenue is generated from the money you invested rather than from the work that you do. You have to pay taxes on your income regardless of whether it's active or passive. Money earned from real estate investing is reported on the Schedule E form and gets carried forward to line 17 of your 1040 tax return. It's then included with your other income and is subject to regular taxes.

The biggest surprise is real estate being second to last on my Passive Income Ranking List because I’ve written that real estate is my favorite investment class to build wealth. Physical real estate doesn’t stack up well against the other passive income sources due to the lack of liquidity and constant maintenance of tenants and property. The returns can be huge due to rising rental income AND principal over time, much like dividend investing. If you are a “proactive passive income earner” like myself, then real estate is great.

The reason I consider dividends artificial and believe they don’t matter is because you can just as easily reinvest your dividends. If a stock is worth $100/share, I don’t care if it issues a $1/share dividend or if the share price instead increases to $101/share – either way, I have the same amount of money, because there’s no difference to my net worth whether I take the dividend or sell part of a stock.

If you or your spouse actively participated in a passive rental real estate activity, the amount of the passive activity loss that’s disallowed is decreased and you therefore can deduct up to $25,000 of loss from the activity from your nonpassive income. This special allowance is an exception to the general rule disallowing the passive activity loss. Similarly, you can offset credits from the activity against the tax on up to $25,000 of nonpassive income after taking into account any losses allowed under this exception.
Diverse income streams are a cornerstone of wealth creation. For busy entrepreneurs, putting all of your eggs in a single basket – even if that basket is your startup – is a bad idea. As you begin to generate revenue, place at least 10% of your revenue into an investment fund. I personally leverage mutual funds to provide consistent returns of the stock market while minimizing my risks associated with the volatility of individual stocks.
This is why we can retire in our 40s. we currently have four streams of income (my salary, husband salary, husband pension and our passive portfolio income which is outside of all our employer retirement accounts). our passive portfolio income is surpassed what most people are aiming for their retirement portfolios. And we don’t sell anything…this is just our dividend income annually. Passive income is the key to flexibility. No employer necessary.
Flynn has created many different products. While his LEED exam is what got him started, he has both earned a commission from selling other people’s products and offered a commission to others who would sell his wares, and also recently created his first software, SmartPodcastPlayer.com, after realizing that most online podcast players offered only the basic stop/start/volume features. He hired a development team to create a superior one, which was a success from day 1. “We sold out 250 beta licenses in less than 24 hours, because I was addressing a need but also, I had built up an audience and trust with them … When you build that amount of trust with your audience, whatever you come out with, they will love.”
If the total is more than 500, don’t complete Worksheet A or B. None of the activities are passive activities because you satisfy test 4 for material participation. (See Material participation tests , earlier.) Report all the income and losses from these activities on the forms and schedules you normally use. Don’t include the income and losses on Form 8582.
It's a little awkward, so we'll get straight to the point: This Thursday we humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence. We depend on donations averaging about $16.36, and only ask you for one gift a year. But 98% of our readers in the U.S. are not responding to our messages, and time is running out to help in 2018. If everyone reading this gave $2.75, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years to come. The price of your Thursday coffee is all we need. People warned us not to make Wikipedia a non-profit. But if Wikipedia were commercial, it would be a great loss. Wikipedia unites all of us who love knowledge: contributors, readers and the donors who keep us thriving. The heart of Wikipedia is a community of people working to bring you unlimited access to reliable information. Please take a minute to keep Wikipedia growing. Thank you.
I have a total of three CDs left. There is no way in hell I’m selling them after holding them for 4+ years so far to take the penalty. The CDs are for 7 years. That would be completely counterproductive. As a result, I feel very stuck with ever getting my CD money back if I wanted to. If the CDs were for just 1 or 2 years, I agree, it doesn’t matter as much. But combine a 7 year term with 4%+ interest is too painful to give up.
But two months later, with the economy slowing down after the financial crisis, his firm began laying people off, and Flynn was informed that after his current projects were finished, he also would be out of a job. At the same time, he couldn’t help but notice that in the LEED exam forums he had frequented, people were referring to him as an expert and directing questions his way. He began to think he might capitalize on that.
Let’s take a look at a smaller and more niche category for the sake of our discussion. We’ll look at “Food & Drink” on the iOS app store. Less big companies and less noise in these smaller categories. You can see the top grossing app is eMeals. A meal planning and grocery shopping list app. Number 5 is another meal planning app. Even has the same green icon. See a trend here? You’ll also see that 16 out of the top 24 grossing apps are “freemium” apps. Meaning, their business model is to give an app away for free and up-sell upgrades.
Let’s take a look at a smaller and more niche category for the sake of our discussion. We’ll look at “Food & Drink” on the iOS app store. Less big companies and less noise in these smaller categories. You can see the top grossing app is eMeals. A meal planning and grocery shopping list app. Number 5 is another meal planning app. Even has the same green icon. See a trend here? You’ll also see that 16 out of the top 24 grossing apps are “freemium” apps. Meaning, their business model is to give an app away for free and up-sell upgrades.
Great breakout of some common items that are (mostly) accessible to individuals. My biggest issue with p2p is the ordinary interest it generates and the ordinary tax that we have to pay. That really takes a bite out of the returns. Fortunately, I opened an IRA with one of the providers to juice the return with zero additional risk. 6-8% nominal returns over a long period of time will make me very happy. It should end up as 5-7% of the portfolio anyway, so nothing too significant.

If you need cash flow, and the dividend doesn’t meet your needs, sell a little appreciated stock. (or keep a CD ladder rolling and leave your stock alone). At the risk of repeating myself, whether you take cash out of your portfolio in the form of “rent”, dividend, interest, cap gain, laddered CD…., etc. The arithmetic doesn’t change. You are still taking cash out of your portfolio. I’m just pointing out that we shouldn’t let the tail wag the dog. IOW, the primary goal is to grow the long term value of your portfolio, after tax. Period. All other goals are secondary.

Speaking from our own experience, you can’t be a passive McDonald’s franchisee. Every McDonald’s potential franchisee will need to complete at least thousands of hours of training before he/she would be approved to acquire a franchise and only if he/she has the financial resources to acquire a franchise. It could take years before one would get a single store franchise. Until the franchisee eventually has acquired multiple stores and established his/her own management team, the franchisee would have to put his/her nose to the grindstone and work his/her ass off every day. I won’t call it a passive investment by any stretch of imagination.

Whether you take a “distribution” (aka free-cash-flow) in the form of a dividend, interest payment, capital gain, maturing ladder of a CD, etc, you are still taking the same amount of cash out of your portfolio. Don’t fall for the trap of sub optimizing your overall portfolio’s performance because your chasing some unimportant trait called “income”.

Real estate crowdsourcing allows you to surgically invest as little as $5,000 into a residential or commercial real estate project for potentially 8 – 15% annual returns based off historical data. Such returns are much better than the average private equity, CD, bond market, P2P lending, and dividend investing returns. With P2P lending, borrowers can sometimes default and leave you with nothing. At least with real estate crowdsource investing, there’s a physical asset that’s backing your investment.

The reason I consider dividends artificial and believe they don’t matter is because you can just as easily reinvest your dividends. If a stock is worth $100/share, I don’t care if it issues a $1/share dividend or if the share price instead increases to $101/share – either way, I have the same amount of money, because there’s no difference to my net worth whether I take the dividend or sell part of a stock.

Developing your own passive income stream is an excellent idea if you believe in financial independence. Not only does it give you freedom of time, but it also reduces your stress, anxiety, and fear of the future. In the book Unshakeable by Tony Robbins, he illustrates how investing a couple of hundred dollars a month is all it takes to become a millionaire. This lifestyle empowers you to do the things you love rather than what pays the bills. See the list below.

Once you start to see some success, don’t be led astray by the money. While Flynn does use affiliate marketing to make money, he only ever recommends products that he has personally used and likes. He is inundated by offers to earn $50 per sale through commission on products he has never even tried. “I’m like, ‘I don’t even know you, I don’t know what this product can do, and I don’t know if this product will help my audience.’ I only use products I’ve used before, because that trust you have with your audience is the most important thing in the world.” He says if you do recommend a product for the incredible commission but your audience has a bad experience with it, your credibility will be shot.

Perhaps a coworker purposefully tries to make your life miserable because they resent your success. Maybe you get passed over for a promotion and a raise because you weren’t vocal enough about your abilities, and mistakenly thought you worked in a meritocracy. Or maybe you have a new boss who decides to clean house and hire her own people. Whatever the case may be, you will eventually tire.

If you disposed of property that you had converted to inventory from its use in another activity (for example, you sold condominium units you previously held for use in a rental activity), a special rule may apply. Under this rule, you disregard the property's use as inventory and treat it as if it were still used in that other activity at the time of disposition. This rule applies only if you meet all of the following conditions.

The new rules may not impact you much unless you have a sizeable passive investment portfolio in your corporation. Keep in mind that a $1 million corporate investment portfolio which generates a 7% rate of return will generate $70,000 of return, but not all of that return may be taxable as a portion could be attributable to unrealized appreciation from stocks, for example.
In expensive cities like San Francisco and New York City, net rental yields can fall as low as 2%. This is a sign that there is a lot of liquidity buying property for property appreciation, and not so much for income generation. This is a riskier proposition than buying property based on rental income. In inexpensive cities, such as those in the Midwest, net rental yields can easily be in the range of 8% – 12%, although appreciation may be slower.
Income from an oil or gas property if you treated any loss from a working interest in the property for any tax year beginning after 1986 as a nonpassive loss, as discussed in item (2) under Activities That Aren’t Passive Activities , earlier. This also applies to income from other oil and gas property the basis of which is determined wholly or partly by the basis of the property in the preceding sentence.
If you’re looking for an investment that offers a seamless user experience, real estate crowdfunding is your tool. Companies like RealtyMogul.com connect investors to debt and equity investment opportunities online, without the hassle of dealing with large banks or financial institutions. The online functionality appeals to all skill levels, from first-timers to veteran investors. In just a few clicks, investors can access the best real estate deals.
But when so many turn down leasing one and one-half acre for one Wind Turbine for each 80 acres, that lease certainly does not materially affect the rest of the Farm or Ranch grazing pasture and the lease pays much more than the farm crow or grazing pasture lease, just because some lawyer said the lease was too long: 30 years plus 30 year option = 60 years, and the wind turbine company has selling production/electricity contracts for the next 150 years – which is needed to obtain financing!
This article is great, defining the differences and emphasizing the advantages of passive income. I believe it might be helpful to list some of the tax advantages of passive income vs active income as well. These include and are not limited to: cash-flow, being able to claim depreciation, deductable loan interest, tax free refinancing and deferred taxes on sale of property via 1031 exchanges. It’s the difference between 50% taxed income and potential tax free income.
I truly believe generating $10,000 a year online can be done by anybody who is willing to dedicate at least two years to their online endeavors. Here is a snapshot of what a real blogger makes through his website and because of his website. Roughly $150,000 a year is semi-passive income followed by another $186,000 a year in active income found through his site. Check out my guide on how to start your own blog here.
Jim Smith and Sharon Jones own JS Toys as 60-40 partners. Jim received $1,000 in interest income from the business because he lent the business money. Jim owns 60% of the business. Therefore, Jim can exclude $600 from his net investment income since that is his allocable share of non-passive income. The remaining $400 would be subjected to the Net Investment Income Tax calculation. Yes, we accountants love a stupidly convoluted tax code- keeps you confused or bored, and keeps us employed.
Earlier this year, the government passed new tax legislation governing Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs), including incorporated professionals. As we enter the final weeks of 2018, one new measure is of particular concern — the potential looming loss of the small business deduction (SBD) in 2019 for corporations with more than $50,000 of passive investment income in 2018.
Good suggestions. I have many of these. One word about the “app” idea. I had a great idea related to personal taxes that I tried to get off the ground with my accountant as a partner. I would say it’s difficult to do this unless you have a coder on your team. Hiring someone is not really viable financially unless the app is simple. When we finally got the quote for a coder to write what we wanted (and after doing lots of mock ups ourselves and getting a demo for investors) the estimate was about 750k just to really get started.

Payroll taxes are primarily Social Security and Medicare taxes. All earned income is subject to Medicare tax. That’s 2.9% (including the employer portion), plus the extra PPACA tax of 0.9% for a high earner. That’s 3.8%. What do you get for that 3.8% (which may be $20K a year or more for a high earner)? Exactly the same benefits as the guy who paid $1000 in Medicare taxes that year. And the guy who only paid Medicare taxes for 10 years and retired at 28. Doesn’t seem too fair, does it, but that’s the way it works. Social Security tax is a little better in that it goes away after $127,200 per year of earned income, but it is also a much higher tax- 12.4% including the employer portion. Social Security also gives you a little more of a benefit when you pay more into it, but the return on that “investment” is pretty poor beyond the second bend point.

In 2017, I ended up deploying roughly $611,000 into stocks and $604,327 into municipal bonds. The stock allocation should boost dividend income by about $12,500 a year, and the municipal-bond portion should boost income by about $18,000 a year after tax ($26,000 pre-tax). Therefore, total passive income gets an about $38,500 lift, which recovers over half of my $60,000 loss from selling the house.
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It was easier recouping the lost $60,000 in rental-property income than I expected. For so long, my primary mindset for passive income was rental income. Having $815,000 less mortgage debt but still generating roughly the same amount of passive income with a much larger cash balance feels great. Further, my passive-income portfolio got even more passive, which is good as a stay-at-home dad to a newborn.

Next, you’ll want to design the simplest form of your app. The minimum viable product. The bare bones version with only the essentials. This is key for successfully creating app passive income. First, start with creating a wireframe. This is just a blueprint of your app’s features. The first screen will be the opening screen or home screen of your app. From here, you will branch out to the different screens and features of your app. Remember, be very descriptive. This is what you are going to give to your graphic designer and development team.

Well written piece, but I question the core premise. Why the fascination with maximizing “income” (passive or otherwise). Shouldn’t the goal simply be to maximize long-term after tax growth of your entire portfolio? If this takes the form of dividend paying stocks, so be it. But what if small caps are poised to outperform? What if you want to take Buffet’s or Bogle’s advice and just buy a broad market index like the S&P 500, (no matter what the dividend because you’ll just have it automatically reinvested to avoid the transaction fees).

Flynn, who blogs at Smart Passive Income and discusses his secrets at the Smart Passive Income podcast, defines passive income as “building online businesses that take advantage of systems of automations that allow transactions, cash flow and growth without requiring a real-time presence. We don’t have to trade our time for money one to one. Instead, we invest our time upfront, creating valuable products and experiences for people, and we reap the benefits of that time invested later,” he says, adding, “It’s not easy. I just want to make sure that’s clear.”
When a taxpayer records a loss on a passive activity, only passive activity profits can have their deductions offset instead of the income as a whole. It would be considered prudent for a person to ensure all the passive activities were classified that way so they can make the most of the tax deduction. These deductions are allocated for the next tax year and are applied in a reasonable manner that takes into account the next year's earnings or losses.
But when so many turn down leasing one and one-half acre for one Wind Turbine for each 80 acres, that lease certainly does not materially affect the rest of the Farm or Ranch grazing pasture and the lease pays much more than the farm crow or grazing pasture lease, just because some lawyer said the lease was too long: 30 years plus 30 year option = 60 years, and the wind turbine company has selling production/electricity contracts for the next 150 years – which is needed to obtain financing!
But, you don't need to go further than that. You can simply write it and publish it and collect the income. That's all. Send out a couple emails to your list (if you have one) or post it on social media, and there you have it. Passive income. Now, the amount of income you receive depends on the quality of the book you've written. How well did you craft the message? How targeted was the information to your audience? It counts.